associated villainies is essentially the same in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other commonwealths as in the Centennial State. Thus this most able and circumstantial historical treatment that has yet been accorded the privileged interests in the United States is of first importance to all thinking Americans. In his introductory words this month Mr. MILLS illustrates this fact by his timely reference to the Sugar-Trust and its master-spirit, who at the time of his writing was industriously doing missionary work in Colorado in the interests of the sugar-princes. Wherever we find special privilege and monopoly rights obtaining, we find political corruption and the oppression and exploitation of the people, leading to the rapid rise in wealth and power of the privileged ones and the corresponding loss of independence and wealth by the great army of wealth-creators. No democracy can long endure under such conditions. Hence the duty of all patriots to unite in active opposition in order that free government may be preserved and the blessings of equality of opportunities and of rights may obtain. The Forest Reclamation Service in the United States: In this issue we publish the third and concluding paper devoted to the immensely valuable work being performed by the Agricultural Department of Washington, by our special contributor, Mr. FRANK VROOMAN. These papers have been as fascinating as they have been valuable. Never, we think, has the great work of the Department been so brilliantly and effectively epitomized and explained in the limit of three short papers as in "Uncle Sam's Romance With Science and the Soil." These papers will be followed by a discussion of "Spoils and the Civil Service," and by a striking paper devoted to the Congressional Library and its value to the nation. The Golden-Rule Mayor; Our readers will find the sketch of the life and work of SAMUEL M. JONES as told by one who knew him, one of the most charming and helpful papers of recent months. The author is a well-known and an accomplished writer, but a person in no way connected with Mr. JONES' interests or works. As a friend of civic righteousness and high ideals of manhood, this writer was for years a close observer of the life and work of the simple, high-minded man. This tribute is one of our series of papers on men and women who have helped the world onward. A Socialist's Reply to Mr. Moody: Our readers will be deeply interested in Mr. BENSON's very lucid discussion of Mr. MOODY's paper from the viewpoint of a Social Democrat. Mr. BENSON has long been one of our ablest journalists among the progressive democratic writers. His little work, Socialism Made Plain, is, we think, the best popular treatise on Socialism from the American view-point or the view-point of a progressive Democrat that has yet appeared. Nothing is more needed than this friendly interchange of criticism between sincere reformers and progressive thinkers. Hospitality of thought and frank discussion between men equally sincere and honest can be productive only of good. Papers Crowded Out: We regret to say that a number of intensely interesting and valuable papers that had been scheduled for the February number have been unavoidably crowded out for lack of space. Especially do we regret having to carry over President MILLER'S third paper on "The Economics of Moses" and Mr. GRIMKE'S second paper on "The Heart of the Race Problem." These papers, however, will appear in the March number. The Whipping-Post for Wife-Beaters: Very timely is the thoughtful paper by Dr. R. W. SCHUFELDT, the well-known New York physician, on "The Whipping-Post for Wife-Beaters," since the President has become a champion of the attempt to resurrect a long-since discarded and brutalizing form of punishment and has thus arrayed himself with the reactionaries and superficial would-be reformers who imagine that by returning to outgrown, barbarous and brutalizing practices and forms of punishments, such as degraded the public imagination and fostered brutality on every hand in the past, we will check exhibitions of inhumanity among people who have come to hate each other, but who by a cruel and degrading law are compelled to live together in the relation of man and wife, even though such living results in the most loathsome form of prostitution. No greater fallacy exists than that society is benefited by seeing brutalizing exhibitions of punishment by governments supposed to be the representatives of the highest expression of civili zation. An Open Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury: We desire to call the special attention of all our readers to Judge T. B. STUART's extremely thoughtful letter addressed to the Secretary of the Treasury. Judge STUART is one of the ablest legal minds of the West. He has given much study to the money question, realizing, as do all thoughtful men not beholden to privileged interests, that the rapid concentration of the banking interests in the hands of the most powerful and unscrupulous commercial magnates of the age presents one of the gravest menaces to the business interests and the prosperity of the people. We do not expect the present government, beholden as it is to privileged interests, to look with special favor upon this thoughtful proposition of Judge STUART. The paper, however, will serve to show what might easily be accomplished by the government if its master-spirits owed their allegiance to the people rather than to small coteries of privileged classes. The proposition is not fundamental enough to suit our views, but it is certainly a step in the right direction and something that merits and should receive the consideration of all earnest men, no matter how conservative they may be, who appreciate the growing power of the privileged classes that hold the circulating medium of the nation in their hands. We wish to say in connection with Professor PARSONS' admirable paper, "The Railway Empire,' which appeared in the January number, that this important subject is greatly amplified and treated in a luminous and exhaustive manner in Professor PARSONS' new work, The Railways, the Trusts and the People, now on the press and being published by Dr. C. F. TAYLOR, 1520 Chestnut street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This work on The Railways, the Trusts and the People will be the most exhaustive and valuable book on the subject that has yet appeared, and should be in the possession of every reader of THE ARENA. VOL. 35 They master us and force us into the arena, Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.”—HEINE. The Arena MAIN CURRENTS OF THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. I. BY PROF. ROBERT T. KERLIN, A.M. ODERN thought, like modern life, is strikingly complex, flowing in innumerable channels, with diverse eddies and strange backward turnings and thwart currents. It suggests an ocean with vast ebbs and flows and mysteriously winding streams, tending definitely no whither, rather than a great river system into which all the fountains and rivulets of a continent pour their independent contributions under compulsion of one general inclination of the land. And yet a broad survey will reveal that the latter is the truer image, as believers in human progress will be predisposed to admit. There is a movement of mind in our great age, and it is not the movement of the seas, which but ebb and flow, raising vain expectations, and leaving only wreckage on barren shores, or which but rage impotently under the lash of the storm-demon, unable to conquer the coasts against which they break; nor is it the movement of that stream conceived by the ancients as encircling the orbis terrarum,-flowing, indeed, but from no source to no sea, like an ancient castle moat. All progress, indeed, brings forth contradictions. Where there is much activity there will inevitably be conflict, opposition, reaction. Where there is vigor and boldness of thought in one direction toward any goal, there will be aroused hitherto inert forces of opposition, of conservatism, of obstruction; and these will be taken by some to be the true signs of the tendencies of the age. It is as when a great inundation occurs and sets. adrift the debris that for years has lain undisturbed in the mud of former overflows; but now a new high-water mark is registered; old deposits are broken up and carried into the main stream; only here and there a back-current gains a portion of the drift and carries it up stream and there leaves it ashore. Hardly would any one be found so foolish as to take the movement of this drift as an evidence that the river flowed toward the mountains, not toward the seas. But in judging of the vastly complex movements of mind we are in far greater danger of being misled. Each observer is too apt to see what he desires and expects to see. His own thoughts are reflected in every book he reads; his own theories of life and the universe appear to be corrobrated by every philosophical system; the events and births of time take their character from his imagination; the outward world is but the projection of his inward world. Against this predisposition we must be on our guard. We must endeavor, in the true spirit of criticism, as Matthew Arnold expresses it, to see and understand things as they really are, not try to refashion them to accord with our wishes. An open mind, a large knowledge of literature and history, of what has been achieved in other ages of the world, a perfect confidence in truth, these are of greater value to us in this undertaking than much ingenuity. Our task is mainly a mere setting forth of facts, with a very small amount of comment. that the comforts and conveniences of life multiplied in the same time so remarkably that we cannot quite imagine the pravity and simplicity of life of a century ago. Answering like the scientist, he will tell you also that in the organization of labor, in the growth of a new spirit among the working classes, in the rise of new social and industrial conditions, the really great and significant results of progress are to be observed. He will tell you that the nineteenth century is the age of democracy in an entirely new sense of the word, and that the growth of this spirit is the great feature of our age. Then the educator will tell you that it has been preeminent for educational advancement. He will show by statistics the wonderful growth of colleges and universities; the multiplication of libraries, newspapers and magazines. He will instance the creation of our free public-school system The manifold greatness of the nineteenth century is evinced by the answers that every profession, every vocation and trade, every science and department of knowledge, and every art will give when questioned on the matter. So conspicuous to all have been certain kinds of achievement that we probably, for different occasions, would designate it now the century of this, now the century of a product of the new democracy and that distinction. We are told, and we all admit it, that it was the age of science, and no previous age can at all be compared with it in this regard. The careful student of our times will discern that the scientific spirit has entered into and dominates every sphere of life and thought that the results of science have had a bearing upon all our conceptions, our entire way of thinking. The enormous machinery of farm and factory, the railroad, the telegraph, the electric light-these are only the more conspicuous evidences of progress in the common view. The scientist himself will say that the discovery of new forces and laws and elements in nature, not the mechanical applications and uses of them, is the great work of science and the great work of the century. The historian will tell us that it was a century of vast political changes and of great achievements in the art of government and marked progress in free institutions. The economist will tell you that it was a great commercial era, by far the greatest in human history; that wealth increased a thousandfold in three generations, and the corresponding theory of popular government. The religionist will affirm that in this age Christianity has achieved greater things than in any period since the Cross became the standard of Rome. He will cite the Christian conquest, by men of peace and love, of continent and island, of nation and tribe, in evidence that it was a great missionary age. In other high realms of spiritual activity-in literature, art and music,— the age was no less great-though here many have thought the contrary. The musician, however, tells us unequivocally that the nineteenth was "the Musical Century." It was the century of almost all the world's great musicians: Beethoven, the Shakespeare of his art; Wagner, the Sir Walter Scott; Chopin, the Tennyson; Schubert, and Schumann, and Liszt, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Rubenstein-how the list stretches out! It is really a most significant fact, for music is a high spiritual matter, very closely akin to religion. But the student of literature will not be outdone by the musician in the enumeration of illustrious names. He will |